Soviet transformation
The air and tank armies were reorganised to mimic the German Panzer divisions and air fleets; communication and intelligence were vastly improved (helped by a huge supply of American and British telephone equipment and cable); training for officers and men was designed to encourage greater initiative; and the technology available was hastily modernised to match German.
'Not until the later stages of the war did Stalin begin to reimpose control, when victory was at last in sight.'
Two other changes proved vital to allow the army to profit from the reform of operational practice. First, Soviet industry and workforce proved remarkable adaptable for a command economy long regarded as inherently inefficient and inflexible.
The pre-war experience of economic planning and mobilisation helped the regime to run a war economy on an emergency basis, while the vast exodus of workers (an estimated 16 million) and factories (more than 2,500 major plants) from in front of the advancing Germans allowed the USSR to reconstruct its armaments economy in central and eastern Russia with great rapidity.
The second factor lay with politics. Until the summer of 1942 Stalin and the Party closely controlled the Red Army. Political commissars worked directly alongside senior officers and reported straight back to the Kremlin. Stalin came to realise that political control was a dead hand on the army and cut it back sharply in the autumn of 1942.
He created a deputy supreme commander under him, the talented Marshal Zhukov, and began to step back more from the day-to- day conduct of the war. Given the freedom to work out their own salvation, the Soviet General Staff demonstrated that they could match the Germans on the battlefield. Not until the later stages of the war did Stalin begin to reimpose control, when victory was at last in sight.
The Soviet Union did not turn the tide on the Eastern Front on its own. Though for decades Soviet historians played down the role of American and British Lend-Lease aid, its real significance has now been acknowledged. From 1942 a flow of food and raw materials and engineering equipment sustained the Soviet war effort.
There was enough food in the end to ensure a square meal for every Soviet soldier; most of the Soviet rail network was supplied with locomotives, wagons and rails made in the USA; one million miles of telephone wire, 14 million pairs of boots, 363, 000 trucks, all helped to keep the Red Army fighting with growing efficiency. Without Allied aid, Stalin later admitted, 'we would not have been able to cope'.
Published: 2001-05-01
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